Competition opens:

Welcome to the home of the AVBOB online poetry project, where all South African poets – expert or ﬂedgling, professional or aspiring – have an equal opportunity to shine.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a poet by profession or a poet at heart – this is your opportunity to be seen and heard, touch thousands of lives, and even be rewarded with one of the coveted AVBOB Poetry prizes. To stand in line to win, you simply need to register your profile and submit your poem(s) online.

Inspire and Restore Through Inspirational Poetry and Writing Competitions

Poetry has always played a special role in coming to terms with the curveballs that life throws. It is certainly not a new art form. Indeed, poetry has much in common with music in written form. It is inspirational by the mere mechanics of rhyme and rhythm. It is the play of words and compression of material into short, but meaningful and almost lyrical form that inspires.

It is also a way to express emotions and thoughts about specific themes, and is often the best way to pay homage to lost loved ones. Many bereaved cannot find the words to express on paper what they feel, but the words of inspirational poems echo and communicates on an emotional level with grieving hearts. As such, our writing competitions serve two purposes. The one is to enable those who enjoy artistically expressing feelings, thoughts, and life through verse to inspire and heal others through their words. The other reason for our writing competitions is to provide those hurting so profoundly that words elude them to find comfort in the rhyme and verse of bereavement poetry.

So many people desperately need to hear or read words of inspiration and comfort during their time of deep sorrow. Only those who have gone through similar experiences are able to truly understand and comfort. Our writing competitions are the tools by which we encourage people who have written about the cycle of life and death, the questions of the heart, and the beauty of their loved ones to share their songs of words with others in need of inspiration.

By healing through words in an artistic form, the poets of our society thus also add to their own healing, helping to make whole the gaps left by death. The hollow emptiness that takes something beautiful to fill can be filled through bereavement poetry inspired by writing competitions.

We often do not understand the “why” of loss. At the moment of death, we want to shout out “Why!” But, the words that we want to share are suddenly swept away by the loss. It is during such times that we find inspiration in the poems of others who understand what we are going through. Sometimes, the articulation of fears, love, respect, pain, and understanding through poetry helps to soothe the pain of others. And, sometimes, it helps us to bring the words from deep in our hearts to life, even if it is years after we have said our farewells to friends and family members who passed away.

The painful tearing of the heart that causes us to experience a pain that no prescription can treat, can be relieved through inspirational words of understanding. We hope that people will join the platform and share their poetry with those in need of understanding. We hope to bring comfort through the sharing of thoughtful words in a time when pain robs us of the words we need to vocalise our loss, leaving us to grasp for any signs of hope.

We hope that these types of competitions will bring forth the writings of those who understand the profoundness of loss, to comfort those who have recently been affected by the loss of loved ones.